Wendy Perrin's Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know - Softcover

Perrin, Wendy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679033513 ISBN 13: 9780679033516

Publisher: Fodor's Travel Publications, Inc., 1997

Synopsis

Wendy Perrin SecretsWendy Perrin's Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know
By Wendy Perrin

The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Smart Traveler

Author Wendy Perrin,Condé Nast Traveler's consumer travel expert, has an unparalleled knowledge of how to anticipate, prevent, and handle travel mishaps. In this guide, she shares that knowledge in lively and spirited style, peppering her travel advice with perversely entertaining tales of actual travel disasters drawn from the Condé Nast files.  No traveler can afford to leave home without reading her great introductory essay entitled "The Fine Art of Complaining."

Each chapter covers a different travel topic, including:
AirlinesLodgingTravel Agents and Tour OperatorsCruise LinesCar RentalShoppingEmergenciesPerrin's insider perspective and sound advice will make every reader a better traveler -- better at planning a vacation to make it trouble-free and more adroit at resolving the occasional unavoidable travel nightmare before it ruins the trip.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Wendy Perrin SecretsCONFESSIONS OF AN OMBUDSMAN

Maybe it was while I was interrogating the airline that handcuffed an innocent passenger, dragging him out of first class and through the airport for needless questioning. Or perhaps it was when I was investigating why thousands of screeching birds had decided to nest at a luxury resort where guests sought peace and quiet. Or while I was tracking down a woman's luggage containing her grandfather's ashes. (The ashes were on a bus -- bumping around the great Southwest.) In any case, at some point during my term as Ombudsman for Condé Nast Traveler magazine, it hit me: This is a really strange job.

Webster's defines an ombudsman as someone who "investigates reported complaints, reports findings, and helps to achieve equitable settlements." But what the Condé Nast Traveler Ombudsman does is solve the nation's travel problems. Say an airline lost your ski gear and won't reimburse you. Or the "ocean view" room you paid an arm and a leg for looked onto a septic tank. Or the silk carpet you had shipped from Turkey never arrived. Our team of troubleshooters investigates on your behalf. We do our best to get the airline, hotel, or carpet store either to make good on its promises or to pay up. In fact, over the years, we have negotiated well over $2 million in refunds and compensation for wronged travelers.

Now, straightening out everyone's travel snags is no easy task. Some people think that because we're a big, glossy magazine we can bring truth and justice to the travel industry with a snap of our fingers. Let me assure you, it's not as simple as donning a big red cape and a blue suit with a giant O on it. It means wrestling -- sometimes for months, or even years -- with the more intransigent travel companies. It requires being part consumer advocate, part judge, part FBI agent, part Dear Abby.

Very little surprises me anymore. Very little would surprise you, either, if you had investigated more than 10,000 travel disasters. I've heard the one about the expensive luxury villa that turned out to be a construction site. And the one about the two-day car rental that cost $7,000. And the cabin that was flooded when the ship's swimming pool emptied into it. And the airline that lost the priceless African gray parrots. Not to mention the nonswimmer who fell into the ocean through a hole in the gangplank, the malaria-stricken girl who couldn't get home from Ivory Coast, the man who died over the Atlantic because the flight attendants couldn't perform CPR, the crew member decapitated by a swinging conveyor belt. Being Ombudsman can make you think twice about leaving home. Don't get me wrong: I love to travel. But I find myself worrying about every little thing that can go awry. Plane trips are the worst. I still call four or five times to confirm a flight, arrive at the airport hours ahead of time, refuse to check luggage, and kill time counting the number of regulations being broken.

The strange thing is that ever since I found out everything that can go wrong on a trip, everything has gone wrong. The day I was supposed to fly to Eastern Europe, the Persian Gulf War broke out and my flight was canceled. The day I was supposed to fly to New York from Los Angeles, there were riots in L.A. and my flight was canceled. I've been stuck on a six-hour bus ride late at night in the Rockies during a snowstorm with a drunken driver. My rental car has broken down in the jungle. I've been stricken by mysterious bacteria in any number of countries. The worst experience of all was on a transcontinental flight when I found myself seated, to my horror, next to the slimeball defense attorney who had won the criminal case on which I had served as a juror. He proceeded to tell me that he had known from the start that his client was guilty. I spent the rest of the flight feeling nauseated (and not from airsickness).

I'm haunted by the nightmares I've investigated even when I'm not traveling. When I went to the airport to send a friend's cat to her in Los Angeles, all I could think of was the time the baggage handler dropped a kennel. The door popped open, the cats inside escaped, and one was run over and killed by a baggage truck and the other was lost for six days.

But being the Ombudsman does have its advantages. It's rewarding to know you're helping out the little guy. And I'm lots of fun at cocktail parties. Not only do I have a stockpile of great conversation openers ("Did you hear the one about the pilot who flew to the wrong country?"), but the same law of the universe that makes party guests gravitate toward doctors -- everyone wants free medical advice - makes me popular as well. Everyone wants to recount his latest travel mishap and hear what I have to say.

As Ombudsman you hear an awful lot of the same old same old. In fact, one Christmas I set it all to music: "Twelve canceled cruises, eleven missed connections, ten bankrupt agents, nine rotten tour guides, eight stolen passports, seven rare diseases, six noisy cabins, five canceled flights, four missing bags, three skipped ports, two damaged cars, and a silk rug that never arrived."

But the vast majority of the complaints we receive are not so bizarre. They come from intelligent people who have been unable to get an obstinate company to listen to reason and deliver what it promised. When we get results for these travelers, they assume we have some magic formula that they don't. But there is no magic formula. We simply know what the rules are, what your rights are, whom to contact for what sort of problem, and how to beat the system when that's possible.

From Publishers Weekly:

Wendy Perrin has heard almost every travel-related complaint and suffered a few herself. Drawing on her experience as a columnist for Conde Nast Traveler and as a traveler, she has compiled information on how to plan for a good trip-and how to rectify a bad one in Wendy Perrin's Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know: Conde Nast Traveler Magazine's Complete Guide. Aside from solid information about airfares, luggage, hotel security and finding a good travel agent, readers will also feel comforted after reading the complaints from Conde Nast readers-no matter how bad you've had it, someone else has had it worse.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fodor's Travel Publications, Inc.
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679033513
• ISBN 13: 9780679033516
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 226